From Best and Busby to Ronaldo and Fergie... as United prepare for their 250th European Cup match, Sportsmail takes a look back at 58 years at the top

Manchester United play their 250th game among Europe’s elite against Olympiacos on Tuesday night.

No English club has featured in more European Cup or Champions League matches than the three-time winners of the competitions, whose appearance record is bettered only by Real Madrid (365 matches) and Bayern Munich (282) and matched by Barcelona (249).

Kings of Europe: George Best (right) and Sir Matt Busby (centre) lead the celebrations after Manchester United won the first of their three European Cups in 1968

Second coming: Alex Ferguson celebrates with his squad after beating Bayern Munich in 1999

The early years: United go down 3-1 to Real Madrid at the Bernabeu in 1957 - Enrique Mateos (centre) fires the hosts' third goal past ray Wood (left) as Bill Foulkes (second left) and Roger Byrne attempt to challenge

UNITED IN THE EUROPEAN CUP

P249 W141 D60 L48Win % = 57

Home: P122 W89 D23 L10Win % = 73 Goals for: 293Goals against: 100

Away: P122 W49 D38 L36Win % = 40Goals for: 163Goals against: 126

Finals: P5 W3 L2Goals for: 8Goals against 8

Biggest win: 10-0 v Anderlecht (1958)

Heaviest defeat: 0-4 (v AC Milan, 1958, Barcelona, 1994)

Quite remarkable when you consider there was a 24-year gap between a 1-0 victory over AC Milan at Old Trafford in May 1969 and a 3-2 win against Budapest Honved in front of just 9,000 people in September 1993.

United’s European odyssey, though, has been anything but straightforward.

Since Sir Matt Busby announced at a board meeting on May 22, 1956 that he intended to defy the Football League and enter the European Cup, United have scored 464 goals and won 141 matches, played in Asia, at a rugby union ground and against two clubs that no longer exist.

‘Football is becoming a world game,’ said Busby at the time. ‘This is where the future of the game lies. You cannot progress by standing still.’

Goals from Dennis Viollet and Tommy Taylor gave United their first victory in the competition, a 2-0 win against Anderlecht on September 12 1956, and they put 10 past the Belgian side in sodden conditions during the return leg in Manchester – a score that remains the club’s record win in the European Cup or Champions League.

It was not, strictly speaking, United’s first home win, however, since it came at Maine Road. Old Trafford did not have any floodlights and Busby’s Babes would not play a European match there until 65,000 saw them draw 2-2 with Real Madrid in the European Cup semi-final of April 1957.

Since then, the European Cup and then the Champions League has been a competition with particular resonance for the red half of Manchester.

Top scorer: Ruud van Nistelrooy slots home against Real Madrid in April 2003

You think of the 1968 final, when United became England’s first European champions with a 4-1 win over Benfica at Wembley; George Best’s performance against the Portuguese side in 1966; Roy Keane’s display against Juventus in Turin in 1999 or those late, late goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer that cemented United’s remarkable comeback against Bayern Munich at the Nou Camp.

And you also think of the 1958 Munich air disaster, when 23 people lost their lives travelling back from a European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade, a tragic event that gave United’s passion to compete with the continent's elite an emotional undertone that has never been forgotten.

Busby's Babes: Duncan Edwards (centre) and Co after beating Red Star Belgrade in the first leg of their European Cup tie in 1958 - Edwards and several of his team-mates perished after the second leg